My CEO Brother Wants Me
He was supposed to be my brother. The cold CEO everyone feared. The man who controlled the entire country's business world.
But one night, he looked at me and calmly destroyed everything I thought I knew.
"We're getting married."
I laughed, but he didn't.
Now every door in my life is closing, every choice is disappearing, and the one man I'm not supposed to love refuses to let me go.
Because to Lucien Hale, this was never forbidden. It was inevitable.
And the most terrifying part? The closer I get to him, the harder it becomes to run.
Chapters
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Chapter 1
Lucien sat by the window of the long black luxury sedan, his arm resting against the door as he stared outside. The city moved past them in a blur of lights and glass buildings, but he wasn't really looking at any of it.
Across from him, his mother kept glancing his way.
"Lucien," she said gently, "about what happened earlier..."
He didn't turn.
"I told you already," he said. "I couldn't control it."
Seraphina sighed softly and leaned back in her seat.
The outburst that morning had been bad. He had shattered a vase, they'd raised their voices, even one of the house staff had to be sent home in tears.
It wasn't the first time, and they weren't sure it would be the last.
His father, Alaric, sat beside him, calm as always, hands resting on his cane.
"Your therapist made another recommendation," Alaric said.
Lucien didn't react, but he was listening.
"He thinks it might help if we adopted a child," Alaric continued. "A young girl. Someone who could stay close to you. Someone you could bond with."
That got Lucien's attention. He looked over, then said, "No one can replace Lina."
The car went quiet immediately.
Seraphina's expression softened at the name.
"We know that," she said gently. "No one is trying to replace her."
Lina was his younger sister, gone barely a year. The house hasn't felt the same since.
"This isn't about replacing her," Seraphina went on. "It's about helping you heal. If you want to get better, you have to be open to trying what's recommended."
Lucien looked back out the window. He didn't reply again.
The car eventually slowed down as they got to a tall building, Clayview Orphanage. One of the many places the Hale family funded.
The manager, a middle-aged woman hurried forward as they stepped out.
"Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale, welcome," she said warmly. "It's an honor to have you here."
Seraphina smiled politely. "Thank you. We're hoping to meet some of the children today."
"Of course," the manager said quickly. "Please, come in."
Lucien followed behind his parents, uninterested. He didn't want a sister. He didn't want anyone trying to fill Lina's space.
"We're looking to adopt a young girl," Seraphina said as they walked. "Around five or six."
"That's awesome. We have several children in that age group," the manager beemed. "There's a class session currently ongoing."
They entered a classroom and saw children seated around small desks while a teacher wrote on the board. Boys and girls both. Some were curious, some shy while some seemed to be used to visitors to react at all.
The manager smiled. "You can take your time."
Seraphina glanced at Lucien. "Do any of them catch your eye?"
He shook his head immediately. "No."
As he turned to leave, a small body ran straight into him making books and pencils scatter across the floor. The little girl gasped, stumbling back.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said quickly, bowing her head over and over.
Lucien stared down at her. She had wide doe eyes and though she was startled, she wasn't crying. Her hair was packed into two small pigtails, slightly messy like she had done them herself.
She kept apologizing as she gathered her things.
He didn't speak or move. He only watched her.
She picked up her books and hurried to her seat without looking up again.
Seraphina and Alaric exchanged a glance behind him. Seraphina then smiled and turned to the manager.
"We'd like to proceed with her."
The manager nodded quickly. "Of course, Mrs. Hale."
Only then did Lucien speak. "I don't want her as my sister."
They both looked at him. Seraphina frowned. "But you seemed to like her."
Lucien's eyes were still on the girl across the room. She was calm, writing like nothing had happened.
He shook his head. "I want to marry her."
The manager blinked in shock, then laughed awkwardly, assuming it was childish talk.
Seraphina sighed softly. "Lucien."
"I will marry her," he repeated, smug certainty in his young voice. "Don't adopt her."
Alaric placed a hand on his shoulder. "You're fourteen," he said calmly.
Lucien didn't look away from the girl. "Doesn't matter."
Seraphina shook her head. "Lucien, how else would she live with us? We'd have to adopt her formally."
Alaric nodded. "She can't come home with us otherwise."
Lucien looked at them both.
"Then adopt her," he said. "Just don't give her our name."
Seraphina's brows pulled together. "Lucien... she'll feel left out if we do that."
He shook his head once. "I won't let her."
They both paused at that.
"She won't feel left out," he added. "I'll make sure of it."
To his parents, it sounded like childish attachment, a grieving boy redirecting emotion after loss.
The manager cleared her throat politely. "Shall we begin the paperwork?"
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8.4
Carissa's son was dying in the ICU, and the bone marrow match had just failed.
The billionaire father, Guilford Gates, cornered her with a cruel ultimatum: naturally conceive a "savior sibling" to save their son. But what shocked Carissa more was his family's sudden accusation that she had heartlessly sold her baby to them three years ago.
"You sold your own flesh and blood to us for five million dollars, so your body belongs to the Gates family."
She was dragged into their gilded estate, treated like a filthy, rented womb. Guilford's new fiancée mocked her, the matriarch humiliated her, and Guilford looked at her with pure disgust. When she desperately tried to feed her sick son and accidentally made him vomit, Guilford violently shoved her away and banned her from the room.
Carissa was devastated and entirely confused. She had never seen a single cent of that five million. Driven by a desperate need for the truth, she investigated and uncovered a horrifying reality: her own father and stepmother had secretly trafficked her baby to the billionaire behind her back, leaving her to bear the ultimate blame.
Looking at the bank transfer record bought with her son's life, the last shred of Carissa's vulnerability died.
She signed the conception contract without asking for a single penny. She was going to use the Gates family's immense power to destroy the blood relatives who sold her, and she would survive this hell to take back her son.
8.4
Everly spent four years playing the perfect, accommodating wife to Carson Moss, swallowing every grievance just to secure medical treatments for their sick daughter.
But at a high-society banquet she exhausted herself organizing, Carson's pregnant mistress crashed the party.
The woman shoved an ultrasound of Carson's "real heir" directly into Everly's frail grandfather's face.
The shock triggered a massive heart attack.
Carson refused to use his private helicopter to save the dying old man, choosing to protect his mistress and his company's IPO instead. Her grandfather died on the hospital table.
Instead of remorse, her mother-in-law demanded Everly publicly cover up the murder.
"You will do exactly as I say, or I will freeze every single cent of the medical trust fund paying for your crippled daughter's treatments."
When a battered Everly returned to the estate, she discovered her three-year-old daughter covered in dark bruises and pinch marks. Her in-laws were deliberately torturing her disabled child.
Everly couldn't comprehend how a family could be so utterly heartless. Her only family was murdered, her child was abused, and her husband threw a five-million-dollar check at her face as hush money.
They thought she would just break and quietly disappear.
But when a terrifyingly powerful billionaire unexpectedly blocked Carson's security team from locking her up, Everly finally saw her window.
She grabbed her sleeping daughter and ran out into the freezing storm, making a blood-bound vow to make the entire Moss family bleed.
7.1
For seven years, I hid my identity as a wealthy heiress to be with my boyfriend, Ewing. I followed him across the country and made myself small so he could feel big.
On Thanksgiving, he ditched our celebration for his first love, Bree, who supposedly had a "burst pipe."
Later, she posted an intimate selfie with him, calling him her "hero."
Then she sent me a video of him at a bar, laughing with his friends.
"She's just being dramatic," he slurred, smirking at the camera. "A new necklace and she'll forget all about it. She's easy."
Easy. Seven years of my life, my love, my sacrifice-all reduced to that one word. I realized I was never his partner. I was just a placeholder.
I didn't cry. I packed my bags, booked a one-way flight to New York, and sent him one final text before blocking his number.
"Don't bother coming home. I'm getting married."
7.8
Andrea was trapped in a suffocating marriage with billionaire Gregory Morse, forced to live as the pathetic substitute for his dead fiancée.
When armed intruders broke into their estate in the dead of night, she called her husband in pure terror.
"Stop playing these cheap, attention-seeking games," Gregory sneered with disgust, and hung up the phone.
She barely escaped with her life, but the cruelty only escalated. At the family mansion, his dead fiancée's sister deliberately scalded Andrea's hand with boiling tea. Instead of defending his wife, Gregory publicly humiliated her, ordering her to clean up the mess while calling her a stray dog.
That night, hiding in the dark wine cellar, Andrea overheard a chilling confession.
Gregory admitted to his brother that he knew Andrea was completely innocent of the car crash that killed his fiancée. He knew she had been framed.
Why did he marry her? Just to use her as a psychological punching bag to vent his twisted grief. He watched her suffer every single day, treating her like disposable trash, while violently threatening anyone who showed her an ounce of kindness.
He thought she was just a useless, helpless shadow who would quietly endure his torment forever.
He had no idea that behind her submissive facade, she was secretly Madame Lan, the apex predator of the global fashion world. And now, she was ready to burn his empire to the ground.
8.9
For seven years, I hid my MIT Ph.D. and my identity as a top haute couture designer to be the perfect, obedient wife to billionaire Cornelius Lambert.
But on our anniversary, while I waited at home with a cold dinner, I found him at a Michelin restaurant with his childhood sweetheart, Halle.
My seven-year-old son sat between them, laughing loudly.
"Mom is too boring. I wish Aunt Halle was my real mom."
Cornelius didn't defend me. He just smiled and affectionately ruffled the boy's hair.
When I finally packed my bags and left, I accidentally triggered an old AI robot prototype Cornelius had given me years ago.
A hidden recording played his voice from the very night he proposed.
"Why marry her? Because she's easy to control. Halle doesn't want to settle down yet, so Cassidy is just a perfect, temporary shield."
Later, when I caught them being intimate in a dark parking garage and snapped a photo, Cornelius watched with cold, dead eyes as his massive bodyguard shoved me against a concrete pillar.
My arm was torn open, blood dripping onto the floor, as they forced me to delete the evidence of his affair.
For seven years, I filed down every sharp edge of my brilliance for a man who saw me as nothing but a pathetic, disposable placeholder.
My heart turned to absolute ice. He thought I was just a weak, powerless housewife.
But he forgot who he was dealing with.
As his luxury car drove away, I pulled up the hidden command terminal on my phone and recovered the encrypted cloud backup of the photos.
I looked at my lawyer with a bleeding arm and a cold smile.
"Let's go. Now, we have a weapon."
7.9
For five years, April Gamble loved Julian Travis with everything she had, trusting him completely.
But on a stormy night, he casually tossed a liquidation agreement at her feet, single-handedly destroying her grandfather's company.
He coldly admitted he only dated her to steal Vance Group's internal financial data.
"You were convenient," Julian said, swirling his whiskey without a shred of guilt.
Before April could even process the brutal betrayal, a breaking news alert lit up her phone.
She watched in absolute horror as her grandfather jumped from the ledge of the Vance Tower on live television.
Julian looked at her writhing, screaming form with utter boredom and simply ordered his bodyguard to throw her out.
Blinded by grief and tears, April sped into the torrential rain, only to be completely crushed by a hydroplaning transport truck at an intersection.
As the shattered glass tore into her skin and the metal crushed her ribs, she died with a hatred so pure it made her teeth ache.
Why did five years of devotion mean absolutely nothing to him? Why did her family have to die just to feed his ruthless greed?
When she opened her eyes again, the harsh hospital lights blinded her, but the familiar burn scar on her arm was gone.
She wasn't the betrayed financial analyst April Gamble anymore.
She had woken up in the body of Altagracia Blanchard, the most notorious, obscenely wealthy heiress in New York.
Julian had taken everything from her, but now, armed with a billionaire's empire, she was going to bury him.